Recently I had the opportunity to help out a friend with a recording he and a couple of friends did. These are your average amateur musicians who love music, know a little about recording, and have consumer grade gear. My friend uploaded his mix for me to listen to and I could tell it needed a lot of help to get it up to snuff. I offered to help him out by mixing it for him and then show him what I did.

I received the files from him and loaded them into Pro Tools and got to work . . .

Oh . . . .

Yikes . . . .

<sigh>

LOL!

Let me tell you what was wrong. No it wasn’t the mic., it wasn’t the preamp, and wasn’t even the DAW; surprisingly enough. It was the source.